Paper short abstract:

Three dimensional video games are a common mode of creative expression. They are also rooted in the historic practices of colonial mapping and military simulation. This paper examines fabrication of virtual worlds as an intervention on African migration and its histories in colonisation.

Paper long abstract:

Calling back to colonial cartography, visual simulations are commonly a process of naming and claiming ownership to a land. Two dimensional mapping is a process through which colonial powers would represent their conquest. Within the contemporary era, visual simulations are steeped within a global Military Industrial Complex. Imperial military conquest shrinks lands into navigable three-dimensional spaces to be traversed through in realtime. Continuing the project of colonisation, modern simulations call for high fidelity photorealistic images and faster computation. Concurrent with this military impulse for high-end imaging, is the development of consumer technologies that render virtual worlds with striking texture and glossy lustre. Whole cities, past empires, and future worlds become 1:1 scale playgrounds. Everyday game players have the military power of visualisation and with that, the possibility of counter-visualising practices. This paper will explore the possibilities of counter-simulations—speculative or fictional visualising practices that encourage the building of alternative political worlds from the ground up. Focusing the fabrication of virtual worlds with 3D animation and video games, this paper will examine the technological imaginaries of African migration. It will investigate the alternative (de)bordering practice posited in the videogame ‘Dreams of Disguise: Errantry,’ created by the author. Exploring fabricated virtual worlds, this paper addresses the possibility of escaping the ever-present border as an African migrant. It places fabrication as decolonial intervention on modern migration.